Russia’s seizure a day earlier of three small Ukrainian naval vessels and 23 sailors — including at least three wounded in a shooting by the Russian side — was the first overt armed conflict between the two sides since the beginning days of the conflict in 2014, when Russian special forces occupied Crimea.

The opening of an additional front at sea, even if Ukraine lacks a real navy, introduced an unstable element into what had been a shadowy war. The conflict pitting Ukrainian soldiers against Russian-backed separatists in the breakaway Donbas region, in eastern Ukraine, has sputtered along for almost five years with more than 10,000 people killed.

The Kremlin, along with some Ukrainian opposition figures, called the martial drumbeats echoing from Kiev a domestic political ploy by its embattled president, Petro Poroshenko. They accused him of fearmongering in order to delay or at least reconfigure the March 31 election that he had seemed certain to lose.

Poroshenko delivered a speech to Ukraine’s parliament asking it to approve the declaration of martial law starting Wednesday, with the military already on full alert. The attack on the naval vessels near the shared waterway, the Kerch Strait, represented a new stage of aggression in what he called Russia’s “hybrid war” against Ukraine.

Members of the 450-member Verkhovna Rada, the parliament, who were present voted 276-30 to support the measure after the president agreed to dilute its scope.

Ukraine also received a boost from the international reaction, underscoring both the isolation of Russia from the West over the Ukraine conflict, and the desire to protect the international maritime convention that allows for unimpeded shipping through any strait.

“What you saw yesterday was very serious, because you saw actually that Russia used military force in an open way,” said NATO’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, during a news conference in Brussels after a meeting requested by Ukraine. “This is escalating the situation in the region and confirms a pattern of behavior which we have seen over several years.”

The New York Times

Neil MacFarquhar © 2018 The New York Times